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Reprinted from The School Review, Vol. XIII, No. 9, November, 1 905 



A SPECULATION REGARDING SHAKESPEARE 



EMERSON VENABLE 
Cincinnati, Ohio 



Whether with or without reason, it has long been regarded as a 
wonderful fact that so little is definitely known concerning the life 
of Shakespeare, that prodigy described in the words of Carlyle as 
"the greatest intellect who, in our recorded world, has left record 
of himself in the way of hterature." In spite of the mass of detail 
which has been brought together by a laborious investigation "extend- 
ing over two hundred years"- — an amount of circumstantial evidence 
which "far exceeds that accessible in the case of any other contem- 
porary professional writer"' — only a few scattered rays of light 
have been shed upon the personality and conduct of the man who 
"was not of an age, but for all time!" 

"Shakespeare's will is in our hands," writes the historian Ward, 
"but there is little or nothing to be read out of it which reveals to 
us even the slightest corner of his life or character."^ After all the 
voluminous results of nineteenth-century research have been care- 
fully and discriminatingly sifted, we find ourselves no nearer to the 
mystery of the man Shakespeare than were our eighteenth-century 
ancestors. Nothing of essential importance has been added to the 
story of his Hfe as briefly summarized by the antiquarian Steevens, 
more than a century ago. "All," said he, "that is known with 
any degree of certainty concerning Shakespeare is — that he was 
bom at Stratford-upon-Avon, married and had children there; went 
to London, where he commenced actor and wrote poems and plays; 
returned to Stratford, made his will, died and was buried." The 
Danish scholar, Brandes, who begins his entertaining and erratic 
Critical Study with the admission that "a biography of Shakespeare is 
difficult, but not impossible,"^ repeats the facts which his predecessors 

1 Sidney Lee, Shakespeare^ s Life and Work. 

2 A. W. Ward, A History oj English Dramatic Literature. 

3 Georg Brandes. William Shakespeare: A Critical Study. 



7l8 THE SCHOOL REVIEW ".'V^^'V^ 

furnish, adding little that is new except the stuff of his ingenious 
dreams. And Sidney Lee concludes that, though "the fully ascer- 
tained facts are numerous enough to define sharply the general 
direction that Shakespeare's career followed," nevertheless, "some 
important links are missing, and at some critical points appeal to 
conjecture is inevitable."^ According to Emerson, "Shakespeare 
is the only biographer of Shakespeare ; and even he can tell nothing, 
except to the Shakespeare in us; that is, to our most apprehensive 
and sympathetic hour." 

Especially meager are the data relating to Shakespeare's plans 
and occupations subsequent to his retirement to Stratford, about 
the year 1611. 

Rev. John Ward, who from 1662 to 1668 was vicar of Stratford, 
left a diary in which he said: 

I have heard that Mr. Shakespeare was a natural wit, without any art at all; 
he frequented the plays all his younger time, but in his elder days lived at Strat- 
ford and supplied the stage with two plays every year, and for it had an allow- 
ance so large, that hee spent att the rate of 1000 1. a year, as I have heard. 
Shakespear, Drayton and Jhonson, had a merie meeting, and itt seems drank 
too hard, for Shakespear died of a feavour there contracted. 

The gossipy notes of Vicar Ward were written, probably, in 1661, 
about forty-five years after Shakespeare's death, and nearly half 
a century before Nicholas Rowe, the first editor of the plays of 
Shakespeare, published, in 1709, what he entitled Some Account 0} 
the Life d^c. of Mr. William Shakespear, for the "most considerable 
part" of which he owned a "particular obligation" to Thomas 
Betterton, whose veneration for the memory of Shakespeare had 
"engaged him to make a journey into Warwickshire." Rowe's 
Account was the standard biography of the eighteenth century, and 
is still quoted with confidence by most commentators. Concerning 
Shakespeare's withdrawal from public affairs, all that is said is that 

The latter part of his life was spent, as all men of good sense will wish theirs to . 
be, in ease, retirement, and the conversation of his friends. He had the good 
fortune to gather an estate equal to his occasion, and, in that, to his wish; and 
is said to have spent some years before his death at his native Stratford. His 
pleasurable wit, and good nature, engaged him in the acquaintance, and entitled 
him to the friendship of gentlemen of the neighborhood. 

I Sidney Lee, op. cit. 



Authr. 



A SPECULATION REGARDING SHAKESPEARE 719 

The opinion generally held by scholars of today, as has been 
said, seems to be based upon the second-hand and scanty memorials 
loosely put together by Nicholas Rowe. Sidney Lee expresses the 
approximate result of modern conjecture concerning the motives of 
Shakespeare, in these words: 

His literary achievements and successes were chiefly valued as serving the 
prosaic end of providing permanently for himself and his daughters. His highest 
ambition was to restore among his fellow-townsmen the family repute which 
his father's misfortunes had imperiled. Ideals so homely are reckoned rare 
among poets, but Chaucer and Sir Walter Scott, among writers of exalted genius, 
vie with Shakespeare in the sobriety of their personal aims and in the sanity of 
their mental attitude towards life's ordinary incidents.^ 

This hypothesis, notwithstanding the fact that it is promulgated 
by writers of high authority and accepted by popu'ar consent, cannot 
but appear to some minds unsatisfactory, inconsistent, and repugnant^ 
to common sense. One recalls Shakespeare's own exclamation: 
"O lame and impotent conclusion!" The venture of this essay is 
to offer, on speculative grounds tenable at least in argument, some 
objections to the commonly accepted opinion concerning Shakes- 
peare's last years, and to suggest a somewhat different hypothesis 
for explaining the facts and traditions in controversy. 

The principal reasons urged in support of the view held by Lee 
and others, that Shakespeare relinquished literary pursuits and went 
back to Stratford in the year 161 1, being then forty-seven years of 
age, and devoted the rest of his life to the material welfare of him- 
self and family, are based upon evidence which may be set forth 
under the following heads: (i) tradition; (2)- Shakespeare's will, 
and other legal documents; (3) lack of positive testimony contra- 
dictory of assumed facts; (4) errors in the First Folio; (5) Shake- 
speare abandoned dramatic composition about 161 1. 

Let us consider the force and validity of deductions drawn from 
these five principal sources. 

In the first place, no certainty can ever be derived from tradition; 
that is, from mere rumor and vague assertion. Neither Ward nor 
Rowe recorded what he himself knew, but each only repeated or 
paraphrased the words of other men. Rowe is not sure that Shake- 
speare returned to Stratford at all! He says Shakespeare "is said to 
have spent some years" there. 

I Op. cit. 



720 THE SCHOOL REVIEW 

In regard to the witness afforded by Shakespeare's will, and 
by documents in the Public Record Office relating to his estates 
and land-purchases, and the like, not much need be said. The 
author of our most reliable and most recent History 0} English 
Dramatic Literature admits that the will does not reveal to us "even 
the slightest corner of Shakespeare's life or character." In it no 
reference is made to the poet's literary property, but it does not 
follow from this that he had not anticipated so important a matter, 
and provided some other means of securing to posterity that intel- 
lectual wealth which, as Carlyle strikingly said, outvalues the empire 
of India. The "Agreements," "Recoveries," and other legal papers 
which, for Shakespeare as for any other man who owned anything 
or had any civil interests, were drafted and filed away for reference, 
are formal records of transactions in no way uncommon. 

Coming to the third objection to the acceptance of the facts 
assumed by Lee and Brandes, and others, it is to be remarked that 
sound reasoning is not satisfied that any proposition or assertion is 
true, simply because no positive testimony contradictory of it has 
been produced. It may be a fact that Wordsworth was destitute 
of the sense of smell; that, as has been facetiously said, his nose 
was "an idle promontory projecting into a desert air;" but one 
hesitates to accept this as a proven certainty merely on the negative 
evidence that he does not allude to odors of any kind in his poems. 
So it might have been that Shakespeare lost his sense of beauty or 
his taste for art when he reached middle life; yet one finds it hard 
to admit the probability of such deterioration, no matter how posi- 
tively stated; for, although proof that it was not so may be lacking, 
the conjecture that it was so outrages the understanding. 

The fourth point to be considered — namely, the allegation that 
many errors which Shakespeare might have been expected to correct 
appear in the First Folio edition of his dramas — has much force, 
and, at first thought, seems to support the theory in question. How- 
ever, it is by no means certain that Shakespeare did not contemplate 
the revision of his works for the press. Evidence in support of a 
contrary theory has been discovered in the First Folio. Let the 
tables be turned on the advocates of the old theory. Can they dis- 
prove conjecture by opposite conjecture ? 



A SPECULATION REGARDING SHAKESPEARE 721 

The fifth and last of the propositions in dispute assumes that 
Shakespeare gave up his art after disposing of his stock in the Globe 
and the Black Friars Theater. 

■ This was in substance what Rowe beheved and wrote down in a 
book, two centuries ago. Essentially this beHef, or supposition, 
has been incorporated into most of the biographies of Shakespeare 
that have ever been written. Is it proven ? Is it true ? Is it cred- 
ible ? Is it not absurd ? 

The theory which supposes that William Shakespeare, in sound 
health, at the age of only forty-seven, chose to abandon his high estate 
as thinker and poet, in order to devote his energies to domestic con- 
cerns, m.oney-getting, and the conventions of EngHsh country life, 
is repugnant to human reason. The idea is incredible ! We instinc- 
tively reject it. Almost every Shakespearian writer, great and small, 
when he comes to tell the old story over, remarks on the wonder- 
fulness of it, and mentions the case as exceptional! 

Mr. Mabie, in his Shakespeare, Poet, Dramatist and Man, seems 
almost to apologize for the unaccountable course of the man whose 
sanity is rightly considered to be undoubted, and whom Emerson 
characterizes as "inconceivably wise." Mr. Mabie says: "From 
the standpoint of today he was still a young man ; but men grew old 
much earher three centuries ago." There is some truth in this, 
but in a list of twenty of Shakespeare's eminent contemporaries I 
find that not one of these lived fewer years than three-score, while 
at least eight of them reached or passed three-score and ten. Bacon 
and Ben Jonson and Drayton and Raleigh and Burton and Knox 
and Chapman and Shirley all hved to be old men ; Coke was eighty- 
two when he died, and Herrick eighty-three. The father and the 
mother of Shakespeare both lived to a ripe old age, and two of his 
daughters reached nearly three-score and ten; so there can be no 
doubt that the chances of longevity were in the poet's blood and 
bone. A modern insurance agent would consider such a man a good 
risk, with the probabilities of holding out at least twenty years longer. 

Common sense is opposed to conjectures usually brought to the 
support of the wisdom of the notion that Shakespeare changed his 
habits of mind, and renounced his book and pen, when he sold out 
his business in London and betook himself to Stratford. If he did 



722 THE SCHOOL REVIEW 

degenerate into a character so commonplace as is ascribed to him, 
or into the scornful, misanthropic pessimist which Brandes fancies 
him, it is not strange that, baffled by such a paradox, Deha Bacon 
regarded him as a "booby" and denied the possibility of his having 
written the works published under his name. The presumptions 
of the cryptogram theorists are hardly more preposterous than are 
the self- contradictory explanations of Shakespeare's alleged conduct 
in the last eight or ten years of his life. Miss Bacon, in 1853, tells, 
in one of her letters, how she told Thomas Carlyle that no one who 
knew the plays attributed to Shakespeare could believe Shakespeare 
wrote them. "It was then," wrote she, "that Carlyle began to 
shriek. You could have heard him a mile!" The shriek was 
natural, and should have settled the controversy. But the method 
of reasoning which concludes that Shakespeare's "highest ambition 
was to restore the family repute," and that his "literary achieve- 
ments were chiefly valued as serving the prosaic end of providing 
permanently for himself and his daughters," merely because of 
absence of specific contemporary testimony that he was like other 
great literary artists in his devotion to ideal, as opposed to mercenary 
and materiahstic, standards of achievement — this method of reason- 
ing — or, better say, of confusing reason- — might well be held respon- 
sible for the modern "war to the knife against Shakespeare's per- 
sonality," as Brandes puts it, and for the wild speculations of the 
Baconians from Joseph Hart to Ignatius Donnelly. The trans- 
formed Shakespeare of the Rowe theory, being impossible and 
inconceivable, must seem a literary impostor- — he could never have 
been the man who wrote Hamlet and Macbeth! He is a myth! 
Francis Bacon wrote him ! See into what chaos the mind is thrown 
when it revolts against its own laws. Is there not a simpler and 
more natural way of explaining and reconciling the facts relating to 
Shakespeare's plans and occupations during the period extending 
from 161 1 to the time of his unexpected death, some five years 
later ? 

Several causes may reasonably be given, any one or all of which 
will account for the removal from London, Shakespeare's temporary 
abode and place of business, to Stratford, where his family lived, 
and which he always regarded as his home. 



A SPECULATION RECrARDING SHAKESPEARE 723 

According to Professor Baynes/ it is probable that as early as 
1608 Shakespeare decided to return to his native place, "as soon 
as he could conveniently terminate his London engagements," 
because of a series of "chequered domestic experiences." His 
father had died in 1601; his youngest brother, in 1607; his mother, 
in 1608; his eldest daughter had married in 1607, and, in the next 
year, had borne an infant, the only grandchild of his that he lived to 
see. "With these vivid and varied family experiences," says Baynes, 
"a strong wave of home yearning seems to have set in, which gradu- 
ally drew the poet back to Stratford." 

Or it may have been that, warned by the increasing pressure of 
Puritan protest against the stage, and foreseeing disaster to his 
business, he deemed it, prudent to avoid risks of future loss, and 
resolved to make sure of what he had earned by investing it in real 
estate in Warwickshire. 

Another reasonable supposition is that the labors and cares of 
theatrical management had become iiksome, and that he felt the 
need of rest and the restorative influences of nature. He may have 
had some premonition of physical breakdown, or, it may be, had 
experienced some intolerable seizure of mental fatigue or nervous 
distress, such as not unfrequently follows severe and long-continued 
effort of brain. The energy which goes to the creation of a great 
original work of literature or art drains the very soul of its vitality. 
Carlyle suffered an anguish of reaction as often as he produced a 
book. It would be easy to multiply instances of the kind in the 
biography of great thinkers and writers. Within the eight years 
immediately preceding the time of his "retirement," Shakespeare 
had brought forth at least twelve of his dramas, including Hamlet, 
Othello, Macbeth, and Lear; and how could he escape the inevitable 
exhaustion entailed by such prodigious labor of mind ? What more 
natural than that he should seek to restore his strength and cheer- 
fulness by a change of scene and a release from worry ? 

It was not his intention to give up literature and to lose touch 
with his old associates; nor did he, after his removal to the country, 
fail to pay occasional visits to London. He probably planned to 
economize his forces, bodily and spiritual, to regulate his exertions 

I T. Spencer Baynes, "Shakespeare," in EncydopcBdia Britaiiiiica. 



724 THE SCHOOL REVIEW 

according to his own moods, to divide his time between the duties 
of a freeholder and the pursuits of literary composition, and, per- 
haps, to revise his dramatic works, in order to secure that "legiti- 
mate fame" for which, hke his friend Ben Jonson, he must have 
wished. Doubtless he was a practical man and attended promptly 
to his business affairs; but, to use the words of Professor Baynes, 
"he could promptly throw the whole burden aside, and in the exer- 
cise of his noble art pierce with an eagle's wing the very highest 
heaven of invention." 

From the conjectures just stated, and from others of similar 
import, the speculations of this article originate. On what founda- 
tion, it will be asked, are these conjectures grounded ? 

The argument is based on evidence of several kinds, four of which 
will be presented, in the following order: (i) evidence from tradition 
and history; (2) evidence from comments and admissions of Shake- 
spearian scholars; (3) character and testimony of Shakespeare's 
literary contemporaries; (4) internal evidence shown in Shake- 
speare's writings. Each of these topics will now be briefly examined. 

First, the evidence of tradition and history: Lewis Theobald, 
in the preface to his edition of Shakespeare, published in 1733, 
repeats, in quaint language, a current tradition, which, if true, or in 
any wise approximating to truth, pours a flood of light upon our 
subject. Theobald says: 

How much our Author employ'd himself in Poetry, after his Retirement 
from the Stage, does not so evidently appear: Very few posthumous Sketches 
of his Pen have been recover'd to ascertain that Point. We have been told, indeed, 
in Print, but not till very lately, That two large Chests full of this Great Man's 
loose Papers and Manuscripts, in the Hands of an ignorant Baker of Warwick 
(who married one of the Descendants from our Shakespeare), were carelessly 
scatter' d and thrown about, as Garret-Lumber and Litter, to the particular 
Knowledge of the late Sir William Bishop; till they were all consumed in the 
general Fire and Destruction of that Town. I cannot help being a little apt to 
distrust the Authority of this Tradition; because as his Wife surviv'd him seven 
Years, and as his Favourite Daughter Susanna surviv'd her twenty-six Years, 
'tis very improbable they should allow such a Treasure to be remov'd, and trans- 
lated into a remoter Branch of the Family, without a Scrutiny first made into 
the Value of it.^ 

' D. Nichol Smith, Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare (Glasgow, 1Q03) 



A SPECULATION REGARDING SHAKESPEARE 725 

Theobald's doubt that Shakespeare's widow and his daughter 
would suffer those precious chests to be removed and lost, would 
not be shared by all modern historians. There is little likelihood 
that Anna Hathaway appreciated her husband or valued his papers. 
As for the daughter, we may agree with Brandes that "it is incon- 
ceivable that Susanna could have any real understanding of, or 
sympathy with, her father."^ She was a rabid Puritan, and per- 
haps thought it a virtuous act to rid the house of a lot of wicked 
stage-plays. 

The manuscripts of Shakespeare may have been lost in the way 
the tradition declares them to have been, or they may have been 
destroyed in the author's lifetime, in 161 3, when the Globe Theater 
was burned; what became of them is one of the unknow^ables. 
Copies of his plays were extant; else how could his friends and 
fellow-actors, John Heming and Henry Condell, furnish the material 
for the First Folio edition of his works, a publication which appeared 
in 1623, seven years after the death of the author? This query 
leads us to the important testimony of the "two obscure actors," 
to whom, in the opinion of Lowell, "posterity owes a greaier debt 
than to any two men living in 1623." 

The fact that Heming and Condell were well regarded by their 
contemporaries is well attested by a memorial poem which forms part 
of the preliminary matter of the First Folio, and which begins with 
the words: 

Shakespeare, at length thy pious fellows give 
The world thy Works. 

Furthermore, the will of Shakespeare makes it certain that these 
two men stood high in his confidence and affection, for, excepting 
Richard Burbage, they only of his "fellows" were remembered 
with a token of his intimate regard, each receiving the bequest of 
"xxvjsviijd. Apeece to buy ringes." 

In the dedication prefixed to the First Folio occur these words, 
addressed to the Earl of Pembroke and the Earl of Montgomery, 
and signed by Heming and Condell: 

But since your Lordships have beene pleas'd to thinke these trifles some- 
thing, heertofore; and have prosecquuted both them, and their Author living, 

I William Shakespeare: A Critical Study. 



726 THE SCHOOL REVIEW 

with so much favour: we hope, that, (they out-living him, and he not having 
the fate, common with some, to be exequutor to his owne writings) you will 
use the like indulgence toward them, you have done unto their parent. . . 
We have but collected them, and done an office to the dead, to procure his 
Orphanes, Guardians; without ambition either of selfe-profit, or fame: onely 
to keepe the memory of so worthy a Friend & Fellow alive, as was our Shake- 
speare. 

The same editors, in a succeeding address to "The Great Variety 
of Readers," say this: 

It had bene a thing, we confesse, worthie to haue bene wished, that the 
Author himself had liued to haue set forth, and overseen his owne writings; 
But since it hath bin ordain'd otherwise, and he by death departed from that 
right, we pray you do not envie his Friends, the office of their care, and paine, 
to have collected & publish' d them; and so to have published them, as where 
(before) you were abus'd with diverse stolne, and surreptitious copies, maimed, 
and deformed by the frauds of injurious impostors, that exposed them: Even 
those, are now offer'd to your view cur'd, and perfect of their limbes; and all 
the rest, absolute in their numbers, as he conceived them; who, as he was a happy 
imitator of Nature, was a most gentle expresser of it. His mind and hand went 
together; and what he thought, he uttered with that easiness that we have scarce 
received from him a blot in his papers. 

This testimony, which clearly implies that Shakespeare's most 
intimate companions had expected him to be executor of his "owne 
writings," and, indeed, that he had begun the task of revision, is 
generahy slighted by conservative editors. 

Passing on from testimony of this class, which is very abundant, 
we come to an exceedingly important kind of evidence — that adduced 
from the critics themselves. Although not one of these can be 
claimed as wholly accepting the view contended for, many, if not 
most, of these admit that Shakespeare could not have abandoned 
literary composition altogether after his withdrawal from I^ondon, 

Charles Knight, reasoning from data derived from a critical 
comparison of the First FoHo edition of the plays and the Quarto 
copies, is convinced that Shakespeare guarded with "jealous care" 
the "more important" of his dramas, "so as to leave with his 'fel- 
lows' more complete copies than had been preserved by the press." 
Among British authorities, Knight stands pre-eminent in defense 
of the conviction that Shakespeare was Shakespeare to the end of 
his life. In his luminous book, William Shakespeare: A Biography, 
published in 1843, ^^ speaks as follows: 



A SPECULATION REGARDING SHAKESPEARE 727 

Every one agrees that during the last three or four years of his life Shakes- 
peare ceased to write, yet we venture to think that every one is in error 

There were no circumstances, as far as we can collect, to have prevented him 
finally leaving London several years before 1613. But his biographers, having 
fixed a period for the termination of his connection with the active business 
of the theater, assume that he became wholly unemployed; that he gave himself 
up, as Rowe described, to "ease, retirement, and the conversation of his friends." 
.... But when the days of pleasure arrived, is it reasonable to believe that 
the mere habit of his life would not assert its ordinary control; that the greatest 
of intellects would suddenly sink to the condition of an every-day man — cherish- 
ing no high plans for the future, looking back with no desire to equal and excell 
the work of the past ? At the period of life when Chaucer began to write the 
Canterbury Tales, Shakespeare, according to his biographers, was suddenly 
and utterly to cease to write. We can not believe it. 

Another witness, August Schlegel, the first and perhaps tlie 
greatest of the sesthetic scliool of Sliakespearian inteipreters, in his 
Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature, says: 

It would be singular indeed if Shakespeare, notwithstanding the modesty of 
a great mind, which he certainly possessed in a peculiar degree, should never 

have dreamed of posthumous fame What foundation, then, is there 

for the contrary assertion, which would degrade the immortal artist to the condi- 
tion of a daily laborer for a rude multitude ? — Merely this, that he himself pub- 
lished no edition of his whole works it is ... . not impossible that the 

right of property in his unprinted pieces was no longer vested in Shakespeare, 
or had not at least yet reverted to him. — His fellow managers entered on the 
publication seven years after his death, (which probably cut short his intention), 
as it would appear, on their own account and for their own advantage'. 

Ward admits, as do most Shakespearian writers, that Henry 
VIII was written after the year 161 1. Dowden, while not allowing 
that Shakespeare wrote much at Stratford, is, like Knight, reluctant 
to believe that the master had parted from his genius, broken his 
staff, and drowned his book "deeper than did ever plummet sound." 
"Prospero," he acknowledges, "must forever have remained some- 
what apart from other dukes and Warwickshire magnificoes, by 
virtue of the enchanted island and the marvelous years of mageship."^ 

Arguing from the character and report of his literary contem- 
poraries, Shakespeare could not have been the person invented by 
Rowe and patented perpetually by succeeding biographers. He 

1 August Schlegel, Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature. 

2 Edward Dowden, Shakespeare: A Critical Study of His Mind and Art. 



728 THE SCHOOL REVIEW 

was the choice and master-spirit of the wits and singers of the 
period — "soul of the age!" — the "spacious times" of Elizabeth. 
The fact that Bacon did not recognize the greatness of Shakespeare, 
though strange, is not inexplicable. Herbert Spencer, in his inter- 
minable Autobiography does not mention Tennyson, and names 
Wordsworth only to disparage him. But, in that elder day, Edmund 
Spenser unerrinlgy discerned the transcendent genius 

Whose Muse, full of high thoughts invention, 

Doth Hke himself herocially sound. ^ 

It requires a poet, or at least a poetic temperament, to discover 
and appreciate a poet. Schlegel and Goethe and Coleridge are 
illuminating diviners and interpreters of Shakespeare. Ben Jonson's 
lines, "To the memory of my beloved, the Author, Mr. Wilham 
Shakespeare, and what he hath left us," is worth more as an appraise- 
ment of Shakespeare the artist than a whole library of ordinary 
criticism. What knowledge, what insight, in the words: 

.... he 

Who casts to write a living line, must sweat, 

(Such as thine are) and strike the second heat 

Upon the Muses' anvil; turn the same, 

And himself with it, that he thinks to fame; 

Or for the laurel, he may gain a scorn; 

For a good poet's made, as well as born. 

And such wert thou! 

This Shakespeare whom Jonson knew — who, with the sweat of 
his immortal soul, shaped upon the Muses' anvil the lines which 
were to render poem and poet famous — was not the easy-going 
husbandman, or the money-loving William Shakespeare, Gentleman, 
of Stratford, who had dropped poetry and taken up "contentment" 
as a vocation. 

In this connection one recalls the oft-repeated and well-attested 
story of that last supper which the three congenial poets, Shakespeare, 
Jonson, and Drayton, had together in Stratford, a short time before 
Shakespeare's death. Jonson had come up from London, probably 
to attend the wedding of Shakespeare's daughter, and the two were 
entertained by their honored and beloved friend. Tradition says 
they took rather too many cups of kindness on the occasion. Whether 

I "Colin Clouts Come Home Againe," 11. 446, 447. 



A SPECULATION REGARDING SHAKESPEARE 729 

Shakespeare and his boon-brothers drank sack or canary, deponent 
sayeth not, but we may well believe they talked about books and 
poems and plays, and not much about things of this world. Drayton 
had recently (1605) reprinted his most important works, and Jonson 
was preparing for the press the first volume of the Folio edition of 
his dramas, which came out within the same year, a few months 
after Shakespeare's death. We can fancy there might have been 
some intimate canvassing as to Shakespeare's literary labors and 
intentions. 

No, Shakespeare's last years were not spent in ease and con- 
tentment. His literary successes were not valued chiefly for the 
prosaic end of "providing" houses and lands and food and raiment 
for himself and his daughters. His chief aims were less material, 
less sordid. His highest ambition was not to restore the family 
repute. He was family repute! Nor was he unhke other poets, 
except in greater greatness. 

How doubt that Shakespeare, measurer of worth, 
Gaged his own measure? Was that splendor dim 

Which should outsplendor all the names of earth, 
Was that, now dazzling us, obscure to him ? 

Did he all realms of human thought explore 

And search all nature to its heart of fire, 
Yet his own majesty of man ignore 

In London playwright and in Stratford Squire?' 

Is it conceivable that the Shakespeare who with jealous precau- 
tion guarded his dead ashes — "Curst be he that moves my bones!" — 
had no forethought to preserve his fame ? The strongest refutation 
of such an assumption is to be found in the writings of Shakespeare 
himself. Read the plays, the long poems, the Sonnets, and be con- 
vinced. He did think of the sweetness of being remembered after 
death, as witness Hamlet's bitter speech to Opheha: "O heavens! 
died two months ago, and not forgotten yet ? Then there's hope a 
great man's memory may'outHve his life half a year; but, by 'r lady, 
he must build churches then; or else shall he suffer not thinking on." 
Assuredly Shakespeare was confident that his own work would sur- 
vive the centuries, as his sonnets abundantly testify. 

' Coates Kinney, " Mists of Fire." 



730 THE SCHOOL REVIEW 

Not marble, nor the gilded monuments 

Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme.' 

Sidney Lee says that "Chaucer and Scott, among writers of 
exalted genius, vie with Shakespeare in the sobriety of their personal 
aims," etc. This may readily be granted, and it is also true that 
they, like other poets, were so much in love with their art that they 
never forsook it. 

Chaucer, at Woodstock with the nightingales, 
At sixty wrote the Canterbury Tales, ^ 

and Scott on his death-bed still continued the work of his imagina- 
tion. Milton and Wordsworth and Browing pursued their ideals to 
the last, and Tennyson, approaching the bourn whence no traveler 
returns, encouraged the faltering faith of his soul by reading the 
dirge in "Cymbeline," doubtless moved thereto by the closing lines: 

Quiet consummation have, 

And renowned be thy grave. 

"Look here, upon this picture and on this," of Shakespeare in 
the last years of his life at Stratford — the one sketched by Rowe, 
and since retouched with bolder coloring by many pencils, the other 
portrayed in the light of a new hypothesis. Both are attempts at a 
correct likeness, and necessarily have much in common; but they 
differ in some essential features. Which is the truer representation 
of the real Shakespeare ? 

The later conception would delineate a man in the prime of life, 
successful in all his undertakings, unrivaled in his achievements in 
the highest department of literary endeavor, applauded by every 
rank, from "Eliza and our James," on the throne, to the groundlings 
in the pit of the Black Friars. His way of life is accompanied by 
"honor, love, obedience, troops of friends." As regards fortune, 
he is "seated in the mean;" not cursed with the "superfluity" 
which "comes sooner by white hairs," but blest with the "compe- 
tency" which "lives longer." And he would live longer and accom- 
pHsh more, not planning to die, but rather to take a new lease of 
strength and ambition. If sick or weary from overtasks, he would 
recuperate and then resume his high calling. The period is transi- 
tional in his career; he has turned a new chapter, not closed the 

I Sonnet LV. ' Longfellow, "Morituri Salutamus." 



A SPECULATION REGARDING SHAKESPEARE 731 

book. Perhaps he will, at leisure, go over all his works, as he had 
gone over portions of Hamlet and of other plays, correcting errors 
and adding new matter. Certainly he will not abandon his art or 
stop thinking. Unless incapacitated by sickness, he will be no less 
absorbed in the "business of his dreams" after his retirement from 
theatrical management, than before. 

Scientific method seeks a generalization which will reconcile 
apparently conflicting data. The prevailing unpsychological inter- 
pretation of the known facts of Shakespeare's last years at Stratford 
has led to strange vagaries. It has transformed the greatest man of 
all time into a chimerical myth. It has distorted criticism whenever 
an attempt has been made to interpret Shakespeare's works in the 
light of his supposed character. In this paper, wdiile attention has 
been focused upon the period of his life regarding which the least 
is known, the facts of his entire career have been kept constantly in 
mind. May not the hypothesis here offered suggest a means by 
which the harsh and jangled bells of diverse opinion may be put 
into harmony ? 






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